About the same as me. I re-tried a month ago with the new recruit a friend thing (crazy good deal that was). But it wouldn't click anymore. I was part sad that a game I liked so much had zero appeal to me anymore, but part glad that I wasn't going to sink a stupid amount of time in it again.

I'm an avid "mmo-er", and wow was always my fall back game. New mmo came out and failed (like always), resub to wow. Last time I played was about 6 months ago, and it was awful. Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2 are right around the corner, with Planetside 2 right behind, fuck wow.

When was the game ever not a loot grind? If anything, it takes much less grind to get raid-ready gear now. Stepping into the likes of Dragon Soul takes a lot less time to prepare for than stepping into the likes of Molten Core.

there's also a lot less to do. I got a scroll of resurrection about a month ago, and I've already run out of things to do. I have iLvl 378 or higher in every slot. Raised my rep with all relevant factions. Levelled a profession to 525. I have 10k in gold. The only thing left for me to do is (non-LFR) DS, and honestly, that instance is pretty boring. So, hopefully OP finds what I did, and those 60 day game-cards are probably enough to hold him over until he realizes the dearth of content.

That just is not true. There are 52 raid bosses in Wrath content with more adds than in Cataclysm. Those bosses, pound for pound, were on average harder than Cataclysm's bosses. In Cataclysm there are 30 raid bosses in total, 31 if you count Sinestra (which most players will never see). How is that as much to do?

Most of the bosses in Wrath were actually much easier, though. Any one wing of Naxx went down quite quickly. Ulduar was tough, and the one really hard raid in Wrath. ToC could be downed in a space of a few hours, and while ICC was initially difficult, the buff decreased that greatly.

I haven't played in months, but when Cata first came out there were constant complaints about how the difficulty was tuned too high for both dungeons and the raids. Much the same was said for Firelands.

To be honest, the grinds have lessened. The problem with WoW since Wrath is the over-casualization of the game. Nothing is hard, when something is, it gets nerfed to oblivion when people start crying about it. So content gets stale faster because everyone clears it faster, and then it becomes just a brainless AoE-fest for points.

While I've played every expansion for at least a year, I believe the game peaked in TBC, although every expansion had some pros, the endgame since TBC has generally been a con, and the endgame is the most important factor in WoW.

I have no idea why people get so stuck on the panda thing, or the completely optional pet battling. Anthropomorphic cows and space goats and dogs (and dragons, and...)? Fine. Pandas? OMG rage quit. Collect 200 pets? No problem. Make them kill each other in an inconsequential min-game you can play when you're bored? OMG rage quit.

Your problem is that you are bored with a game you played for seven fucking years, dude, stop making excuses for simply being bored. Are you telling me you'd still be playing if it wasn't for pet battles? No, you wouldn't be.

I accept that Pandarans were in the canon before, and they nearly were the xpac race for BC, but as far as I'm concerned - once they made it an April Fool's joke, it was just that. Instead we got a massive retcon to give us Space goat shammy's. Further, Pokemon (to me) is just proof that they know their hardcore audience is gone and they're just throwing in the kitchen sink to appease the 'hardcore casuals' that are left.

We all saw the cracks in the armor with Wrath when healing and tanking became LOL-fests. I could have fallen asleep and kept up my MT heals and never get below 85% mana. However, I stuck around (mainly for the guild I was in) while I saw many of our best players leave. Then Cata hit and they did a 180 on the difficulty meter - this was GREAT... except I found that there were far more wrathtards (OMG Healer, do your job, I'm standing in fire here! derp derp derp!) than competent players. Out of frustration, I figured I'd finally take a swing at tanking, leveled a Paly in no time, and was quickly epic'd out. However, that being my 5th 85 I'll admit, I was completely burnt out. Still, I just don't feel any draw to go back for the panderans.

Now, D3 on the other hand - after playing the beta, I found myself much more interested in that than I had anticipated. I'll likely dive back into there for a while, but I just don't see anything appealing about WoW anymore. At one time it was a challenge to take on with (mostly) serious players, I just don't see that as the case anymore.

Pokemon might be the reason I get MoP (that and I need to buy every CE of every Blizzard game from now on no matter what, still pissed I don't have the Vanilla CE, and that I don't have any pre-TBC Blizzard CEs at all). Something to do outside of general PvE and PvP is something WoW has needed since day 1.

That's really a pretty lame comparison. I've played WoW for 4 years till I get really bored.
If I wanted to play again, I could buy game time anytime I want. But I just don't care about this game anymore and I can't understand people who say they might get dragged back into it, although they don't really want to.

The people are what made it fun though! Raiding with a bunch of people and just all around shit talking and fooling around. When things got serious and you needed to get shit done(like a boss for example), then you could stop the messing around.

I usually got saddled with the impatient, overly serious people lol I love the lore and the structure of the game and the world is beautiful, I just don't work well with others. That and i wasent exactly the best player. People don't like that lol

It's actually every day right now. People are saying other MMO's constantly try to copy WoW - and that's true - and they never end up being as good as WoW is/was. At the same time, WoW is dying and is catering to all of the casuals, leaving the original, tougher fanbase in the dust.

WoW is still the most polished MMO with the most content that caters to the widest range of audiences. Anyone who says that it's not hardcore enough isn't doing the upper end raiding, which still takes months to progress through.

As for people who say it's not hardcore because there are pandas and pokemon—just don't fucking use them. Easy.

I started playing the game in BC WoW. I was in Middle School at the time. I have very fond memories of it.

5 years later and I'm still playing it.

Looking back at TBC, I notice that it was not necessarily "better" back then, but everything was "exciting and new." I actually think the best the game has been (during the time I've played it) was in WotLK. Ever since Raid and Dungeon finder, the community has taken a hit. Suddenly no one has any incentive to be good, friendly people in PvE groups any more. Piss someone off? Who cares? Re-queue and find new people. But in WotLK (before 3.3) the people you queued with were people from the same server, people you spent time in /2 to recruit. People that, should they leave, aren't replaced automatically with other people you've never met.

People on the server knew each other. You knew who was an asshole, who was a ninja, and who were some of the greatest PvE companions you'd ever have.

Guilds mattered. It wasn't like it is nowadays, when /g is just filled with almost nothing but dead air with the occasional "any1 wanna q" or "grats" should the odd achievement pop up. Guilds helped each other out, formed groups for raids, and would spend hours talking together while they explored a raid (Raiding Kara with my old guild, Unconventional, contained some of the best experiences I've ever had). Maybe some guilds still do this, but most seem to contain people like "I'm just here for the perks."

I don't think Cata as an expansion is that bad. It changed a lot, yes. But I think the one thing that wounded the game for me was LFG and LFR. It killed the community. The heart and soul of the game. Suddenly the game was no longer a social game; it was all about "Queue up, kill things, get loot, repeat."

People always tell me: "Then just don't use LFG or LFR." But I can't not use them. Everyone else does. It's nigh impossible to get a group together without one of these tools, simply because everyone else uses them out of convenience.

I think if Blizzard removes the LFG and LFR tools it will be a better game, but that's just my opinion.

I guess I'll always just miss the days of raiding with my Unconventional compatriots donned in Corruptor Raiment.

I agree with some of your sentiments there. I'm not too bothered by the LFD as it was always quite a hassle to get good groups together. the time:reward ratio was honestly not in favour of it. I remember spending anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to assemble a good group of 5 people to tackle a heroic dungeon and then not get the loot i wanted. day after day. after a while you really get sick of it.

The LFR on the other hand! well, the fights are made easier, to the point that half the group of 25 can be dead and still kill the boss, mechanics that would insta kill someone on normal only take 30% of people's health so it's then up to the healers to keep people topped up and worse still, it ruined the pug raid scene on most servers.

I used to be able to get a group together on my alts and clear some or all the bosses in a place on a regular basis. no one really wants to do that anymore because some people are happy doing LFR because I guess they fail at normal mode mechanics.

I agree LFG isn't as bad as LFR. However, I still don't like that you're playing with people you're never going to see again. When people don't have to see the people they're grouping with, they can be as anti-social as they want.

But LFR... I miss the days when raiding was something you planned for. It was something you prepared for. Now... now, and I hate saying this, raiding is nothing more than a glorified heroic dungeon.

Some of the most fun times I had in the game was during guild runs of Karazhan, before we went all hard-core raiding guild and I got burnt out and quit. Karazhan is still my favourite dungeon and I find myself nostalgic about it every so often. Almost makes me want to play again, but I tried Wrath and got tired of it after a couple months.

That's ok, once you start it up you'll realize none of the new content is fun, and they even ruined most of the old content, and then you'll continue to play it anyway for months, complaining the whole time.

Yes, I suppose that is the more common reaction. I played long enough to hit max level (maybe the raids/heroics will be fun?), then a few months later came back and got some of the rare mounts (maybe it will be fun to sit on my seahorse in Orgrimmar with "The Camel-Hoarder" floating above my head?), and then just gave up.

But from my experience its almost exactly the same. I played for about the first 5 years of the game being out and finally quit. I'm over 1 year free from WoW and to this day I get the most intense urges to just restore my account and log on again. Sometimes a certain song will trigger it. Sometimes it is just in my daydreams. But nonetheless, I am always fighting myself to not play again. And let me tell you: it feels good not playing anymore.

I can't listen to certain bands at all now, they remind me too strongly of zones and questlines from when I played. I will hear a song and its like 'BHAM' TELDRASSIL! And I have to restrain myself mentally. But been out about 14 months and I am glad.

When you say "it's almost exactly the same", do you mean you've had an actual drug dependency? Because I have, and I also played WoW pretty hardcore for several years, and in my opinion they are almost nothing alike.

The comparison doesn't really bother me since I know people are just being cute, but only one of those two things put me in the hospital twice and almost led to my suicide.

Ok, the consequences are very different, and drug addiction is much more powerful and difficult to break, but at it's core the mechanisms aren't really that different are they? Both of them act on the reward circuitry part of your brain, giving you a staggered influx of pleasure. They both have a negative impact on your organization skills, emotions, social life, etc. Ignoring this because of some moral obligation to respect drug addiction is tantamount to saying a common cold is not a real disease because AIDS is much worse.

Thank you! Of course I get downvoted initially, but I'm glad you made my point clear. I was drug dependent for 4 years. I am currently going into social work, and have been studying dependency for a few years.

WoW can be addicting yes, but it's like saying how a teenage girl is addicted to texting, and shopping. It is not even remotely close to gambling and drug addiction. Yet people claim it's on the same level.

Actually, to a certain extent there may be more merit to it than you think. Of course, there is no physical dependency to WoW, but a number of the more psychological theories of addiction can actually be applied to WoW. In particular, behavioural models centered around rewards seem rather applicable (i.e. ding! - you got some new skills), back this up with the neurobiological reward system for controlling behaviour through pleasant affect and you've got a reasonable explanation for it's addictive qualities.

Still, I'd certainly rather be playing a game than addicted to heroin.

this reminds of when i was on vent with some old wow buddies and one guy was like, Hey Bank, you wanna you know, get back on wow and come help me raid lead heroics with these nubs for raiders. me: NOPE, lol.

i uninstalled that treadmill and haven't looked back, having no desire to play it again whatsoever. dont get me wrong, i love the people i played with, just it's an old game that has only really changed for the worse with the cata expac. and pandas and pokemon aren't making me regret my decision either.

I quit playing 3 years ago. My cousin and his girlfriend just moved back into town, and both play. They want me to start again. :( Also I work with him so he always wants me to talk about it with him, and help him get better. lol. FML